Here’s the first pictures from the movie based on David Mitchell’s novel, Cloud Atlas (well, one photo, two pieces of production art). This is one of those books that is “too good to be science fiction” – even though it is SF at its best. It was a Richard and Judy best book pick, and has the rare distinction of being nominated for the Booker Prize, Nebula Award, AND Arthur C. Clarke Award.

Basically, the novel consists of six different stories set during six different centuries – four historical, two SF far-future, which interweave. Cloud Atlas was kind of self consciously over-arty as a book, and could end up as a real mess (IMHO) unless handled well on the big screen. E.G. it’s either going to be really good, or really bad. Flip a coin at this point to see which.